Chakras

TGS brings back a beautiful edition of this all important esoteric work by C.W. Leadbeater. "Man is a soul and owns a body - several bodies in fact; for besides the visible vehicle by means of which he transacts his business with his lower world, he has others which are not visible to ordinary sight, by means of which he deals with the emotional and mental worlds."

Excerpt:

WHEN a man begins to develop his senses, so that he may see a little more than everybody sees, a new and most fascinating world opens before him, and the chakras are among the first objects in that world to attract his attention. His fellow-men present themselves under a fresh aspect; he perceives much with regard to them which was previously hidden from his eyes, and he is therefore able to understand, to appreciate and (when necessary) to help them much better than he could before.

Their thoughts and feelings are expressed clearly before his eyes in colour and form; the stage of their development, the condition of their health become obvious facts instead of mere matters of inference. The brilliant colouring and the rapid and incessant movement of the chakras bring them immediately under his observation, and he naturally wants to know what they are and what they mean. It is the object of this book to provide an answer to those questions and to give to those who have not yet made any attempt to unfold their dormant faculties some idea of at least this one small section of what is seen by their more fortunate brethren.

In order to clear away inevitable preliminary misconceptions, let it be definitely understood that there is nothing fanciful or unnatural about the sight which enables some men to perceive more than others. It is simply an extension of faculties with which we are all familiar, and to acquire it is to make oneself sensitive to vibrations more rapid than those to which our physical senses are normally trained to respond. These faculties will come to everyone in due course of evolution, but some of us have taken special trouble to develop them now in advance of the rest, at the cost of many years of harder work than most people would care to undertake.

I know that there are still many men in the world who are so far behind the times as to deny the existence of such powers, just as there are still villagers who have never seen a railway train. I have neither time nor space to argue with such invincible ignorance; I can only refer enquirers to my book on Clairvoyance, or to scores of books by other authors on the same subject. The whole case has been proved hundreds of times, and no one who is capable of weighing the value of evidence can any longer be in doubt.

Much has been written about the chakras, but it is chiefly in Sanskrit or in some of the Indian vernaculars. It is only quite recently that any account of them has appeared in English.

As this hook may probably fall into the hands of some who are not familiar with Theosophical terminology it may be well to insert here a few words of preliminary explanation.

In ordinary superficial conversation a man sometimes mentions his soul - implying that the body through which he speaks is the real man, and that this thing called the soul is a possession or appanage of that body - a sort of captive balloon floating over him, and in some vague sort of way attached to him.

This is a loose, inaccurate and misleading statement; the exact opposite is the truth. Man is a soul and owns a body - several bodies in fact; for besides the visible vehicle by means of which he transacts his business with his lower world, he has others which are not visible to ordinary sight, by means of which he deals with the emotional and mental worlds. With those, however, we are not for the moment concerned.

In the course of the last century enormous advances have been made in our knowledge of the minute details of the physical body; students of medicine are now familiar with its bewildering complexities, and have at least a general idea of the way in which its amazingly intricate machinery works.